The ones that make it "easy" aren't the ones you want. All you need is a couple of hundred in equipment and you can have it to work on your other AC items. Like gauge and vaccum, line cutter, flare tool. The ones that make it easy charge a lot more and you don't have anywhere near as much flexibility. This ACiq unit has a 12 year warranty. I bought a no name for our house and it's been flawless, approaching 3 years. For a new house, I want a premium brand like ACiq.
Please include pictures on HOW you installed that in your Prius!!!! And WHY you did it! Since cars use the engine coolant to heat the car, a heat pump is useless in a car.
Not in the Prius, just comparing a DIY project, daunting to most people, like a Prius EGR/waterpump/thermostat service is to a newbie. In both cases, I had my doubts going in. Had problems with both, my wife told me I'd failed on both . But worked my way through each of them alone with a bit of online help. All comes down to judgment of what you can and cannot do. Like I know not to even attempt to do a head gasket job by myself ... yet. That may change when I get my shop concrete in, and my car lift in place (later this year). I want to drive this Prius until the end of gas cars.
I see..... With a lift, everything is easier... The difficult part for me on the head gasket was getting the bolts in quick enough for the timing cover. But it wasn't too bad.
You are 1000 times the mechanic I am, for sure. This last job stretched my mechanic skills to the limit, and I know that it was super simple. I'm gonna have to drive to Orlando to get a head gasket done if it happens anytime soon.
We had one diyer here that tore his engine down three times and never got it right. He finally changed the engine which, from a skills standpoint, was easier.
The Repair Manual stipulates a VERY tight time limit for this, with the Toyota spec'd form-in-place gasket. I noticed Gasket Masters used an alternate, Permatex Ultra-Black IIRC, with a more leisurely cure time. Only downside I think, you need to let it cure for a day, say before adding oil, or at the least before running the engine. Full disclosure: just an arm-chair mechanic, never done a head gasket, hoping to never have to, but...
Also regarding timing chain cover install: one brilliant, DIY YouTuber printed out the repair manual diagram of the bolt locations and torques, near full-scale, taped it to cardboard, punched holes at each bolt location and pushed the correct bolts through the holes, ready to go.
I started with bicycles, and moved up.... Having the proper tools is very important. Watch lot's of videos, read manuals. You'll get a lot different versions of doing something with the videos. A lot are a waste of time you can FF through. But you can always learn something.
I took the install sequence pic from post #31, cut-and-pasted in the torque values (ft/lb). Handy as a reference in 8.5x11, and if you print it bigger, could service as the aforementioned "tape onto cardboard" and push the bolts into it". Addendum: updated the attachment, had missed torque value (19 lb/bt) on bolt 24 (in sequence).